Sympathy for the Devil {Liam Stewart | The Darkest Minds}

5. Valkyries

Waking up the next morning, the first thing she notices is that her back is pressed against something, or rather, someone, solid and calmingly cool, with an arm wrapped around her. Sunlight is streaming through a crack in the curtains, irritating her still-sensitive eyes, and so she wriggles until she facing the other person in the bed and they wrap their arm tighter around her, pulling her closer. It's a situation she'd been in before, but not for a long time; often on tour, if they spent too much time training, the exhaustion would catch up to them and she and Clancy would pass out on whichever bed they had been sitting on, often waking up wrapped up in each other and the quilt. Part of her mind knew it was Liam, remembered what had happened the night before, and was content on going back to sleep in the safety of the cosy bed and human contact.

"Wait, where's Zu?" Voice groggy, Mags' head shot up fast enough that it hit Liam in the chin, and she heard him mutter a quiet 'ow, what?' His arm was still around her, and Mags looked up at him as he looked down at her, a little confused. "Zu fell asleep in between us last night." Looking around, Liam's forehead creased in concern, though neither of them had moved.

"Chubbs isn't here either." His voice was surprisingly serious, and the two of them moved to get out of the bed, but as they lost contact, Liam actually shivered. "You're like a furnace, you know?" He said, half-smiling as he made a beeline for the jumper he had probably pulled from lost and found yesterday and draped on the table. Mags flushed.

"I am literally -broken." After a pause, she made a soft noise of understanding. "Part of me literally cannot say what I am, to anyone." After putting on her shoes, Mags joins Liam at the door. He takes her hand, and she can feel how cold his has already gotten, and chuckles, lacing their fingers together. The sun has been up for a few hours, and as they search the hotel the tension begins to rise, with no sign of Zu or Charles.

"I just don't understand where they could have-" Liam starts as they burst through the front doors, before a loud crash sounds from the back of the building. The two of them sprint to the source of the noise, only to see Zu standing with her glove off, exposed hand resting on the side of a vending machine with all it's glass blown out, and Charles cowering behind and empty dumpster. Zu grins brightly at the pair and Mags waves back weakly.

"We're just trying to find breakfast." Charles offered, coming out of hiding to collect some food, and after a beat, Liam's face splits into a grin and he starts to laugh, letting go of Mags' hand to go and start pulling food from the vending machine. Mags is the last to join, picking up the leftovers to take back to their room, but she stops, looking inside the vending machine and seeing the metal coils the food had been trapped in. The others are waiting for her, but she can't help herself. She gives her lot of food to the others to carry up and she begins to pull the coils free until she's gotten all of the little metal pieces from the machine. Then, she lines them up and uses a little bit of her fire in order to crack the paint from them, before collecting them all to take back to the room with the others.

"What do you need those for?" Charles asks, and with a glint in her eyes, Mags tips her head back, placing as much of one coil into her mouth as could fit, and heating it up with her lips closed until she could pull the red-hot stump from her mouth and swallow the liquid metal. The others watched in fascination as Mags' expression was overcome with joy; the texture was like maple syrup, glowingly warm and a little iron-y, it slid into a place in her stomach that had been hollow and empty for so long.

"Snack." Was all she said, a little dreamily. Zu nodded like this was the most logical thing in the world, and opened a packet of crisps to start her breakfast, while Charles choked out a 'no fuckin' way is that a snack' and Liam just looked a little dumbfounded. Waving a chip at him, Zu seemed to snap him out of his state, and he took it and started eating, shaking his head like he couldn't believe it. Mags didn't care, just kept eating the metal coil until it was finished, and she moved onto regular food, wrapping up the rest of the coils for later.